Negotiating Reform: the privatization of public companies in Brazil

Brazil’s experience in the privatization of public companies belies explanations to the effect that the success of market-oriented economic reforms depends on the existence of an Executive branch endowed with the autonomy to conceive and impose strategies of change opposed by vested interests. The article contends that privatization has moved forward in Brazil despite the clear absence of an autonomous Executive, through a negotiated process of change that is part of an institutional context which multiplies both points of veto and actors holding veto power. As a consequence, success depends upon the interplay of pro- and anti-privatization interests, within institutional constraints, as well as upon relevant actors’ dominant ideas concerning the public sector’s role and scope.

economic reform; public companies; privatization